About a year ago I was introducing a friend to diving. It was a sweet deal: we dived few times and in return I got her to coach me. My friend teaches fencing in Utrecht, and I have always admired the beauty and the intelligence of the sport. I attend...

My son is at home, after the first day of the exam week. A moment inherited from nineteen century traditions, and still a thing that we all have to come through. It is totally stupid to believe that a week full of exams can actually measure what anyb...

If there is a golden rule in the handbook of writing thrillers, is that each one should be contained, so that we are presented with a case that does get solved. Contained, and yet open. A thriller must also allow the author the chance of continue, in...

A driving force behind the use of social media is the huge potentialities that it has, when compared with more traditional forms of campaigning. Social media seems to be the silver bullet: cheaper, almost for free, and with a big reach. Even better,...

Talking with a historian friend of mine, I marveled the possibilities of the amateur. So much to discover in our own families. Me myself, I don't know anybody without a migrant in the family. Everybody has lived in another country, has come or gone t...

maybe to travelto liveis the same getting closerto that inevitableand lonelyplacewe have travelledand arrivedmany timeswe have arrivedgoing awayso many timesthat maybe to travelis to make distanceto that final arrivalto travelto not to arrive...

Above water, on deck, it's a mess. The main bottles are heavy, most of the dive suits are uncomfortable, you have gloves and diving masks and extra bottles and reels hanging all around. The amount of ungainly equipment reminds you that we are not mad...

Here in the Council of the European Green Party, one highlight is to appreciate the wide and broad political diversity of our sisters parties. It is a highlight also because it remains surprising, even when you expect it. Yesterday, in a session of t...

So here we are, once again in a Council of the European Green Party. In times of euro-skepticism, how should we consider a group of several hundred persons coming from all corners of Europe to meet in Madrid and talk about the crisis? Disaster touris...

Pedro Navaja, one of the most known salsa songs around, describes how a street thug knifes a prostitute to rob her, at the same time that she shots him dead. A while later, a drunk walks by the two corpses, takes money, knife and gun, and walks away...

A trenched war and a chance for a truce, The public debate on migration policy reminds a trench war. Two armies are facing each other, dug in extensive fortifications. Each side is close to invincible, since fortifications have grown into a complicat...

Recent events in South America are, as a matter of fact, a hard blow for all of us atheists, humanists or even moderate agnostics. Current reality points to the existence of a superior being, definitively interested in south america. How else to expl...

By first time in a decade and more, I have applied for a job. Since I moved to The Netherlands, or actually, since we have a kid, we decided that I'd be the one to stay at home. After a while we settled in an easy routine, satisfactory at the end. I'...

There is no doubt that nowadays every other party is searching for forms of survival. Never before civil participation has so many options. If you want to change the world today... would you become member of a political party? Unlikely. One of the co...

There is no doubt that nowadays every other party is searching for forms of survival. Never before civil participation has so many options. If you want to change the world today... would you become member of a political party? Unlikely. One of the co...

What is it that makes a tradition? How is it that it get fixed in own and others' rhythms? In these days of ours I tend to believe that it's not the tradition itself but luck, simple luck. An unforeseeable combination of peoples and places, of ideas...